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    Los Angeles protests live: LAPD calls for protesters to disperse as Trump says ‘bring in the troops’

    LA mayor Karen Bass has asked residents of the city not to engage in violence or chaos.The comments came after the mayor met with officials including California’s governor Gavin Newsom and LAPD police chief Jim McDonnell to discuss the safety of Angelenos.She said: “Angelenos — don’t engage in violence and chaos. Don’t give the administration what they want.”The mayor and Newsom had previously asked the administration to rescind its order to deploy troops, with the California governor calling it a “a serious breach of state sovereignty.”The City of Glendale, California, has announced that it is formally terminating its agreement with the Department of Homeland Security and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice).The agreement allowed federal immigration detainees to be held at the Glendale Police Department facility. The space reportedly offered access to virtual and in-person visitation as well as facilities such as telephones, showers and drinking water.The city said in a release published shortly after 7:09pm PDT on Sunday evening that the decision had not been made lightly. It said that it acknowledged “with regret” that some families may now face greater difficulty visiting loved ones held by Ice, and that access to legal counsel may be more limited elsewhere.The statement said:
    Nevertheless, despite the transparency and safeguards the City has upheld, the City recognizes that public perception of the ICE contract—no matter how limited or carefully managed, no matter the good—has become divisive.
    And while opinions on this issue may vary—the decision to terminate this contract is not politically driven. It is rooted in what this City stands for — public safety, local accountability, and trust.
    Here are some more photos of the protests in Los Angeles coming through on the wires:Police have requested all residents and businesses to report any vandalism or looting to the LAPD so that it can be documented in an official police report, asking for all damage to be photographed prior to it being cleaned up.The force had previously reported looting in stores located in the area of 6th St and Broadway, with officers having been dispatched to investigate the area.National guard soldiers were seen carrying long guns and riot shields after being deployed to LA on Sunday morning, reports the Associated Press (AP).Protesters were reportedly heard shouting “shame” and “go home” at the troops. The agency added that after some protestors closely approached the guard members, another set of uniformed officers advanced on the group, shooting smoke-filled canisters into the street.The protests in Los Angeles come as Donald Trump’s new ban on travel to the US by citizens from 12 countries, mainly in Africa and the Middle East, goes into effect.The new proclamation, which Trump signed last week, “fully” restricts the nationals of Afghanistan, Myanmar, Chad, Republic of the Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Haiti, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen from entering the US.The entry of nationals of Burundi, Cuba, Laos, Sierra Leone, Togo, Turkmenistan and Venezuela will be partially restricted.The weekend of protest has seen several dozen people in the city being arrested, with the Los Angeles police department declaring an “unlawful assembly” in the civic center area of downtown Los Angeles.The Associated Press (AP) reports that one individual was detained on Sunday for throwing a Molotov cocktail at police, and another for ramming a motorcycle into a line of officers.Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, is professor of public policy at the University of California at Berkeley.Now that Donald Trump’s tariffs have been halted, his big, beautiful bill has been stymied, and his multi-billionaire tech bro has turned on him, how does he demonstrate his power?On Friday morning, federal agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice), the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the FBI, and the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) conducted raids across Los Angeles – including at two Home Depots and a clothing wholesaler – in search of workers who they suspected of being undocumented immigrants.Though figures vary, they reportedly arrested 121 people.They were met with protesters who chanted and threw eggs before being dispersed by police wearing riot gear, holding shields, and using batons, guns that shoot pepper balls, rubber bullets, teargas, and flash-bang grenades.You can read more of Robert Reich’s full opinion piece here: We are witnessing the first stages of a Trump police stateVocal and boisterous, the crowd for large parts of the day on Sunday was mostly peaceful. But tensions flared several times. On Sunday afternoon, police used teargas to disperse groups of protesters gathered near the detention center. And in the evening, officers fired round after round of flash-bangs in an attempt to push the protesters back up the freeway off-ramps.Los Angeles police leaders said officers had been shot at with commercial grade fireworks, and had rocks thrown at them.Read the Guardian’s full report on the day’s events here.Donald Trump’s administration promised to crush opposition in Los Angeles…But the overwhelming show of force may have awoken something else. The city is responding with a roaring backlash.So writes the Guardian’s immigration reporter, Maanvi Singh, in this interesting analysis.Read the full analysis below.The LAPD says business owners are reporting stores are being looted in the area of 6th St and Broadway and it has dispatched officers to investigate.The LAPD also said:“An UNLAWFUL ASSEMBLY for the area of the Civic Center part of Los Angeles has been declared. Those with Cell Phones in the area of the Civic Center have received the alert.”Pockets of Los Angeles tonight – in pictures.Police patrolling in downtown LA.Protestors and dumpster fires.Isolated protests continue into the evening.A British news photographer has undergone emergency surgery after being hit by non-lethal rounds during protests in Los Angeles, reports PA.Nick Stern was documenting a stand-off between anti-Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) protesters and police outside a Home Depot in Paramount, a city in LA county and a location known as a hiring spot for day labourers, when a 14mm “sponge bullet” tore into his thigh.He told the PA news agency: “My initial concern was, were they firing live rounds?“Some of the protesters came and helped me, and they ended up carrying me, and I noticed that there was blood pouring down my leg.”Stern is now recovering at Long Beach Memorial Medical Centre following emergency surgery. More

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    Trump travel ban barring citizens from 12 countries goes into effect

    Donald Trump’s new ban on travel to the US by citizens of a dozen countries, mainly in Africa and the Middle East, went into effect at 12am ET on Monday, more than eight years after Trump’s first travel ban sparked chaos, confusion, and months of legal battles.The new proclamation, which Trump signed last week, “fully” restricts the nationals of Afghanistan, Myanmar, Chad, Republic of the Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Haiti, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen from entering the US. The entry of nationals of Burundi, Cuba, Laos, Sierra Leone, Togo, Turkmenistan and Venezuela will be partially restricted.Unlike Trump’s first travel ban in 2017, which initially targeted citizens of seven Muslim-majority countries and was criticized as an unconstitutional “Muslim ban”, the new ban is broader, and legal experts said they expect it to withstand legal challenges.The announcement of the new travel ban was greeted with less outrage and protest than his initial 2017 ban. On Monday, the new ban appeared to be overshadowed by Trump’s other immigration battles, including furious protests in Los Angeles over Trump’s deportation raids, which were followed by Trump deploying the national guard to the city despite the opposition of California’s governor.The newly instituted ban notably includes citizens of Haiti, a majority Christian country. Haitians in the US were demonized by Trump during his presidential campaign, with the president spreading the baseless conspiracy theory that Haitian immigrants in Ohio were eating people’s pets.It also imposes heightened travel restrictions on citizens of Venezuela, who have been targeted repeatedly by the White House in recent months, as the Trump administration’s sudden deportation of Venezuelans in the US to a notorious prison in El Salvador sparked a massive legal battle.The ban is also expected to have a disproportionate effect on African countries, with some citizens of targeted countries worrying about being cut off from opportunities for education, professional development, and networking.Mikhail Nyamweya, a political and foreign affairs analyst, previously told the Guardian that the new travel bans and restrictions would “bring about a pattern of exclusion” and “may also institutionalise a perception of Africans as outsiders in the global order”.“This policy is not about national security – it is about sowing division and vilifying communities that are seeking safety and opportunity in the United States,” Abby Maxman, president of Oxfam America, a nonprofit international relief organization, said.While five of the countries on the new ban list are not majority-Muslim, including Republic of the Congo, Myanmar, Eritrea and Equatorial Guinea, as well as Haiti, the list does target citizens of non-white countries in the developing world, fueling criticisms that the ban is fundamentally racist and shaped by “bigotry”.Trump’s first travel ban, in 2017, was widely criticized as a fulfillment of Trump’s campaign pledge to institute “a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States”. The Trump administration later added citizens of other non-Muslim countries to the banned list.The new ban does not revoke visas previously issued to people from countries on the list, according to guidance issued Friday to all US diplomatic missions. However, unless an applicant meets narrow criteria for an exemption to the ban, his or her application will be rejected starting Monday. Travelers with previously issued visas should still be able to enter the US even after the ban takes effect.In a video posted Wednesday on social media, Trump said nationals of countries included in the ban pose “terrorism-related” and “public-safety” risks, as well as risks of overstaying their visas. He also said some of these countries had “deficient” screening and vetting or have historically refused to take back their citizens.Trump also tied the new ban to a recent attack in Boulder, Colorado that wounded a dozen people, saying it underscored the dangers posed by some visitors who overstay visas. US officials say the alleged perpetrator overstayed a tourist visa. The man charged in the attack is from Egypt, a country that is not on Trump’s restricted list.The Associated Press contributed reporting More

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    Newsom says Trump is ‘hoping for chaos’ as national guard arrives in LA after protests – US politics live

    On Sunday, California governor Gavin Newsom urged protestors to stay peaceful, saying that Donald Trump is “sending 2,000 national guard troops into LA county – not to meet an unmet need, but to manufacture a crisis”.Newsom, who previously warned that Trump’s decision was for the sake of a spectacle, said:
    “He’s hoping for chaos so he can justify more crackdowns, more fear, more control. Stay calm. Never use violence. Stay peaceful.”
    Hundreds of people were spilling into the streets outside the Metropolitan Detention Center in downtown Los Angeles Sunday afternoon in ongoing protest against ICE raids throughout the city.National Guard officers have doubled in size to around 50, and are no longer posing but moving toward protesters with batons and riot shields.Officers with Los Angeles Police Department were seen clearing streets by firing volleys of teargas and rubber bullets to clear the crowd.One protester with a bullhorn shouting: “We’re not afraid of you.”Detainees inside MDC were heard rattling metal bars of windows in solidarity with protestors.Donald Trump has said that LA is being “invaded and occupied” and that “violent, insurrectionist mobs” are “attacking” federal agents, adding, “these lawless riots only strengthen our resolve”.In a post on his Truth Social platform, the president said he is directing members of his cabinet to “take all such action necessary to liberate LA from the Migrant Invasion and put an end to these Migrant riots”.The president, who has already deployed the national guard to the city and when asked earlier today did not rule out invoking the Insurrection Act, did not specify what the action would entail.He wrote:
    A once great American City, Los Angeles, has been invaded and occupied by Illegal Aliens and Criminals. Now violent, insurrectionist mobs are swarming and attacking our Federal Agents to try and stop our deportation operations — But these lawless riots only strengthen our resolve. I am directing Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, and Attorney General Pam Bondi, in coordination with all other relevant Departments and Agencies, to take all such action necessary to liberate Los Angeles from the Migrant Invasion, and put an end to these Migrant riots. Order will be restored, the Illegals will be expelled, and Los Angeles will be set free. Thank you for your attention to this matter!
    National guard members then strike approaching protestors with batons and deploy gas canisters, prompting them to disperse in the opposite direction.Footage on Fox News shows a violent confrontation between several national guard members and a protester, which ends with the person being physically restrained on the ground and handcuffed.Protesters gathered outside the Metropolitan detention center in downtown LA are chanting “shame on you” at national guard soldiers who have created a perimeter around the federal building.Other chants include: “Donald Trump, let’s be clear: immigrants are welcome here,” “say it once, say it twice, we will not put up with Ice” and “no hate, no fear, immigrants are welcome here.”The Los Angeles Times reports that the Department of Homeland Security has declared the crowd on the street outside the Metropolitan detention center in downtown LA an “unlawful assembly”.Earlier Chris Murphy, a Democratic senator for Connecticut, said in one of the most direct rebukes:
    Important to remember that Trump isn’t trying to heal or keep the peace. He is looking to inflame and divide. His movement doesn’t believe in democracy or protest – and if they get a chance to end the rule of law they will take it. None of this is on the level.
    California’s governor, Gavin Newsom, has called on demonstrators to keep protests peaceful and not “give Donald Trump what he wants”.In a post on X, he wrote:
    California — Don’t give Donald Trump what he wants.
    Speak up. Stay peaceful. Stay calm.
    Do not use violence and respect the law enforcement officers that are trying their best to keep the peace.
    The large crowd outside the Metropolitan detention center appears peaceful, with demonstrators carrying flags and signs, standing against a line of national guard soldiers wearing shields, helmets and gas masks.Last night, Newsom posted on X that the federal government sought a “spectacle” by deploying the National Guard and urged protestors not to give them one. He said:
    The federal government is taking over the California National Guard and deploying 2,000 soldiers in Los Angeles — not because there is a shortage of law enforcement, but because they want a spectacle. Don’t give them one. Never use violence. Speak out peacefully.
    This is from the Los Angeles Times:CNN reports:
    Law enforcement has launched pepper balls into the crowd outside of the Metropolitan Detention Center in an effort to disperse protestors, some of whom are seen throwing water bottles at officials and carrying signs decrying the police force, video shows.
    Protestors have been clashing with National Guard, ICE and DHS agents outside of the detention center in Los Angeles on Sunday, where demonstrators gathered in the latest iteration of protests against the immigration raids that swept across California over the weekend.
    In at least one instance earlier today, the National Guard appeared to use pepper balls, spray and tear gas to create a path for armored vehicles to enter the detention center. The crowd has spilled into the street, blocking traffic.
    National guard members deployed what appeared to be tear gas canisters at protesters on Alameda this afternoon, according to NBC News.
    Protesters had gathered around a federal building where National Guard members were deployed. The National Guard members threw canisters that let out a smoke-like material when they hit the ground. The action made the crowd disperse.
    The crowd began to slowly gather around the federal building again minutes after the incident. National Guard members have created a perimeter around the building.
    Trump’s decision to deploy the national guard to Los Angeles is a “chaotic escalation”, the city’s mayor, Karen Bass, has said.In a post on X, Bass wrote:
    This morning, President Trump deployed the National Guard into Los Angeles.
    Deploying federalized troops on the heels of these raids is a chaotic escalation.
    The fear people are feeling in our city right now is very real – it’s felt in our communities and within our families and it puts our neighborhoods at risk. This is the last thing that our city needs, and I urge protestors to remain peaceful.
    I’ve been in touch this morning with immigrant rights leaders as well as local law enforcement officials. Los Angeles will always stand with everyone who calls our city home.
    This footage is from CNN. It shows national guard soldiers moving forward and pushing protesters back in LA.NBC News reports that a group of protesters have gathered in the Boyle Heights neighborhood of LA.
    Video shows the protesters scattered in an area near National Guard vehicles. One protester is carrying a Mexican flag. National Guard members have formed a perimeter around their vehicles, and are facing the protesters.
    The protesters plan to march to downtown Los Angeles to join a rally planned for 2pm local time.
    Asked if he’s prepared to invoke the Insurrection Act, Donald Trump told reporters in New Jersey: “It depends on whether or not there’s an insurrection.”Asked if he thinks there is one, Trump replied: “No, no, but we have violent people and we’re not going to let them get away with it.”In response to another journalist’s question, Trump said: “I think you’re going to see some very strong law and order.”Other lawmakers from outside California also condemning Donald Trump’s decision to send in the national guard in response to the protests against federal immigration crackdowns.In a post on X on Sunday, Vermont’s Democratic representative Becca Balint said:
    “ICE descended upon immigrant communities in LA, targeting innocent people just trying to live their lives, and when ICE was met with fierce opposition Trump deployed the National Guard. This is not ‘going after criminals,’ it’s a scary escalation meant to sow even more fear and division.” More

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    Kristi Noem: the made-for-TV official executing Trump’s mass deportations

    Little more than a year ago, Kristi Noem’s political prospects appeared to be in freefall. The then South Dakota governor was criss-crossing the country on an ill-fated book tour, widely seen, at least initially, as an audition to be Donald Trump’s running mate. Instead, Noem found herself on the defensive – a position Trump never likes to be in – after revealing in her memoir that she had shot the family’s “untrainable” hunting dog, a 14-month-old wirehair pointer named Cricket.Even in Trumpworld, where controversy can be a form of currency, the disclosure shocked. In the weeks that followed, she faded from contention and the breathless veepstakes rumor mill moved on. By the time Trump selected JD Vance as his vice-presidential nominee, Noem’s path forward on the national stage was unclear.But a year is a lifetime in politics, the saying goes. It is even more true today, in Trump’s warp-speed Washington, where Noem now leads the sprawling department at the heart of the president’s hardline vision to carry out the largest deportation campaign in American history.Since assuming office as the secretary of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in January, Noem has played a starring role in the second Trump administration, executing the White House’s immigration agenda with fierce loyalty, Trumpian defiance and a made-for-TV approach that supporters have hailed as a full-throttle push to “Make America Safe Again” and critics have condemned as theatrical posturing with cruel – and possibly unlawful – consequences.View image in fullscreenThe department oversees a vast portfolio, with a workforce of 260,000 people spread across 22 federal agencies, including the Secret Service, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema) and the nation’s premier cybersecurity agency.Yet immigration has dominated her tenure. In her first days in office, Noem, 53, revoked several Biden-era programs and policies – among them initiatives crafted in response to a global rise in migration that brought record numbers of people to the US-Mexico border and helped seed the political ground for Trump’s comeback in 2024. She has also deputized personnel from across federal agencies and enlisted local law enforcement to expand the administration’s deportation operations.And she has been front and center in many of the administration’s most closely watched legal clashes, including in the case of a Maryland man mistakenly deported to a prison in El Salvador. On Friday, in a stunning reversal by the administration, he was returned to the US, where he now faces criminal charges.“Justice awaits this Salvadoran man,” Noem declared on X.Away from the department’s Washington headquarters, Noem has embraced the role of high-profile surrogate.She has toured the southern border on horseback, wearing a cowboy hat, and on an ATV, camera in tow.During a recent international tour, Noem met with world leaders, served a Memorial Day meal to coast guard personnel at a base in Bahrain, and squeezed in a camel ride. While in Poland, she delivered a highly unusual endorsement of the nationalist presidential candidate, Karol Nawrocki.“Donald Trump is a strong leader for us, but you have an opportunity to have just as strong of a leader in Karol, if you make him the leader of this country,” she said at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Warsaw. (He won.)But it has not been entirely smooth sailing. During a recent Senate hearing, Noem botched a question about habeas corpus – the legal right, guaranteed in the constitution, that allows people detained by the government to challenge their detention. When Noem claimed habeas corpus was the president’s “constitutional right” to deport people, the Democratic senator of New Hampshire Maggie Hassan, interjected: “That’s incorrect.” Habeas corpus, the senator countered sternly, “was the foundational right that separates free societies like America from police states like North Korea”.Such is the trajectory of an administration official in Trump’s “central casting” cabinet – a camera-ready cast that includes Fox News personalities, a wrestling impresario and a Kennedy – all of whom serve at the pleasure of a president who prizes public displays of adulation and, perhaps above all else, unblinking execution of his agenda.DHS maintains that under Noem’s stewardship, the department has returned to its “core mission of securing the homeland”.“The world is hearing our message,” said DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin, pointing to record-low border crossings since Trump took office. “Thanks to President Trump and Secretary Noem, we have the most secure border in history.”But critics say her approach is a striking departure from the way past secretaries have led the department.“The secretary went before Congress and gave an incorrect definition of habeas corpus,” said Nayna Gupta, policy director at the nonpartisan immigration advocacy group the American Immigration Council. “That level of incompetence paired with the political theater, I think, is quite distinct from prior administrations.”The show and tellNoem’s first months on the job have played out like a rolling production, broadcast across the official social media accounts of the homeland security secretary.Noem, dressed in tactical gear, accompanied agents on a pre-dawn raid in New York, live-tweeting the operation as it unfolded. In February, she toured a nascent tent camp at Guantánamo Bay erected as part of the administration’s costly – and controversial – mission to detain people at the US navy base in south-eastern Cuba.In April, Chaya Raichik, the far-right activist behind the LibsofTikTok account, joined Noem for a “sting operation” in Phoenix. In a social media post, a flak jacket-clad Noem cheered the arrests of “Human traffickers. Drug Smugglers. 18th Street Gang members” while toting a semi-automatic rifle pointed toward an agent’s head.“Kristi Noem doesn’t know how to hold a gun or run the Department of Homeland Security,” the Arizona senator Ruben Gallego, a Democrat who served as a lance corporal in the US Marines, chided on X.At a recent Senate hearing, Noem defended her travel, saying that her on-the-ground presence “meant the world” to staff and personnel after four years of what she has described as neglect by Biden administration officials.View image in fullscreenBut even allies have occasionally winced at the pageantry.Conservative media personality Megyn Kelly said Noem was doing an “amazing” job protecting the homeland but, on an episode of her eponymous podcast, begged the secretary not to “cosplay Ice agent”.The former Fox News host, gesturing to her own cascading tresses and studio make-up, said of Noem: “She looks like I look right now, but she’s out in the field with her gun being like: ‘We’re gonna go kick some ass.’”“Just stop trying to glamorize the mission,” Kelly advised.Noem has long been deliberate about shaping her public image.As governor in 2019, she installed a “six-figure TV studio” in the basement of South Dakota’s capitol building, according to a local news investigation. (Noem’s office told the outlet the expense was far less than flying to the nearest studio for her frequent Fox News appearances.) In her second term, she starred in a series of workforce recruitment ads, appearing as a nurse, a plumber and a highway patrol officer in an effort to attract job seekers to the state.“Kristi Noem, you might say, is very public-facing,” said Jon Schaff, a political science professor at Northern State University in South Dakota, who has observed Noem’s political career. “She likes the celebrity aspects of politics.”It’s a trait she shares with her boss, the former host of The Apprentice.As his homeland security chief, Noem said Trump asked her to cut a series of ads to amplify the administration’s message. She obliged. In February, DHS launched a multimillion-dollar international ad campaign in which Noem warns undocumented immigrants living in the country to “leave now” or the government will “hunt you down”.DHS says the ads have had an impact. While the department did not provide statistics, Tom Homan, the border czar, recently told reporters that at least 8,500 people have self-deported through the government’s “CBP Home” app and estimated that “thousands” more were leaving without notice.In March, Noem delivered the message in person. Amid a legal standoff over the administration’s decision to deport scores of Venezuelans to El Salvador under an 18th-century wartime law, the secretary traveled to the country. Wearing combat boots, an Ice baseball cap and a $50,000 Rolex on her wrist, she toured a notorious Salvadorian prison.View image in fullscreenStanding in front of a cell packed with prisoners bare from the waist up, Noem spoke into the camera: “If you come to our country illegally, this is one of the consequences you could face.”On Wednesday, a federal judge ruled that the men sent to El Salvador must be given a chance to challenge their removals, finding that many had likely been imprisoned on the basis of “flimsy, even frivolous, accusations” of gang membership. DHS said it provides adequate due process to all deportees.In public statements, officials at DHS and the White House have repeated that their mass-removal effort targets the “worst of the worst”. “We are focusing on dangerous criminals,” Noem said during a Sunday appearance on Fox News. “We are going out there and ensuring that people that repeatedly break our laws are being held accountable.”But the far-reaching campaign has ensnared legal residents, children with cancer and even US citizens. In multiple instances, the administration has blamed “administrative errors” for deporting Salvadorians who had court orders protecting them from removal. This week, the government returned to the US a Guatemalan man wrongfully deported to Mexico.“The administration wants to project fear and cruelty, with no limits as to how far they will go,” said Vanessa Cárdenas, executive director of the pro-immigration advocacy group America’s Voice. “It’s working in the sense that it is creating fear. There are pockets of communities that are changing their whole lives to adjust to the fact that our government is now using all its levers to go after immigrants.”Noem’s rise to Trump’s orbitA self-described “farm kid” who took over her family’s ranch after her father’s sudden death, Noem catapulted to national prominence during the Covid pandemic. As governor of South Dakota, she mirrored Trump’s handling of the virus, denouncing mask mandates and stay-at-home orders even as her state struggled, at times mightily, to contain its spread.In 2020, Noem feted Trump in South Dakota with a star-spangled Independence Day celebration. It was then that Noem memorably gifted him a 4ft replica of Mount Rushmore that depicted his likeness alongside the faces of the four presidents carved into the granite over the Black Hills of South Dakota.“At that point, she went all in and being Maga really became a part of her image,” Schaff said.In the years that followed, Noem worked studiously to burnish her national profile, becoming a regular presence in conservative media. She adopted Trump’s rhetoric, especially on border security.Despite South Dakota’s considerable distance from the US-Mexico border – roughly 1,000 miles (1,600km) north – Noem made the issue a top priority. “South Dakota is directly affected by this invasion,” she declared in an address last year.In 2021, Noem deployed South Dakota national guard troops to Texas to assist with the state’s border enforcement efforts. Yet residents recall that she did not deploy them to help recovery efforts after historic summer floods in the state.Until recently, Noem was banned from setting foot on tribal lands in her own state, after accusing tribal leaders of complicity with drug cartels – an allegation they strongly deny.View image in fullscreenDuring her Senate confirmation hearing in January, held days before Trump was sworn in, Democrats questioned Noem’s credentials for leading the vast department responsible for border enforcement, disaster response and federal protection.She acknowledged her nomination may have come as a “bit of a surprise”. But, Noem said, she had asked Trump directly for the position because it was his “No 1 priority”. The job, she said, required someone “strong enough” to carry out the president’s immigration agenda.So far, she has proven to be a faithful executor, carving out a role that is part enforcer-in-chief, part high-wattage messenger. In an interview earlier this year, the secretary vowed to leverage the “broad and extensive” authorities of her office to carry out Trump’s immigration crackdown.With Noem at the helm, DHS has targeted blue states and cities over their sanctuary city policies, escalated the administration’s feud with Harvard by moving to block the university from admitting international students, and departed from longstanding precedent to allow immigration enforcement in sensitive locations, such as places of worship, schools and hospitals. In visceral scenes, masked Ice agents in plain clothes have arrested foreign students and academics on the streets.Internally, Noem has administered polygraph tests to uncover leaks to the press about upcoming immigration raids.She works with Stephen Miller, the White House deputy chief of staff and chief architect of Trump’s immigration strategy, as well as “border czar” Homan, both empowered by the president to help achieve the president’s deportation goals.Though Noem frequently touts the administration’s success removing, in the secretary’s words, “dirt bags” and “sickos”, the White House has expressed disappointment with the pace of deportations. In a tense meeting with immigration officials last month, Noem and Miller announced an aggressive new target: they demanded federal agents more than triple their arrest figures from earlier this year to 3,000 people a day.Internal emails obtained by the Guardian show senior officials at Ice have instructed staff to “turn the creative knob up to 11” as the agency scrambles to ramp up arrests. On Tuesday, Ice reportedly detained more than 2,200 people in a single day – an agency record.Abigail Jackson, a White House spokesperson, said in a statement that the president was “thankful for Secretary Noem’s partnership in fulfilling one of his most important promises to the American people: deporting illegal aliens”.She continued: “The Trump administration takes this promise seriously and will continue working to supercharge the pace of deportations and Make America safe again.”View image in fullscreenAs the Trump administration turns to increasingly aggressive tactics, federal courts are pushing back, with Noem’s DHS at the center of the legal firestorm. In a ruling last month, a federal judge found DHS had “unquestionably” violated a court order on deportations to third countries.In response to the growing number of challenges, Noem has largely channeled the president’s defiant posture. “Suck it,” she gloated on X, after a lawsuit against the department involving detained migrants was voluntarily dismissed.While courts have hindered Trump’s mass-removal effort, the supreme court handed the administration a major victory last week, temporarily allowing the US to strip provisional legal protections from hundreds of thousands of immigrants who left dangerous and unstable countries, potentially exposing them to deportation.On Wednesday, Trump unveiled a sweeping new travel ban targeting 12 countries, many of them majority-Muslim or African. He said the timing was spurred by a recent attack at an event in Boulder, Colorado, honoring Israeli hostages, for which an Egyptian national was charged.In a video posted on social media, Noem announced that US immigration authorities had taken the suspect’s family into federal custody. Within 24 hours, a federal judge blocked their deportation, citing constitutional concerns and warning that their swift removal could violate their due process.“The actions of this secretary have been manifestly and almost universally determined to be unlawful and unconstitutional,” said Paul Rosenzweig, a former deputy assistant secretary for policy at the DHS. Noem, he said, seemed to be operating on “political basis alone,” reorienting the department around Trump’s priorities. “This isn’t working like it’s supposed to,” he said.View image in fullscreenOn Capitol Hill, congressional Republicans are racing to boost the department’s efforts by delivering Trump’s “big, beautiful bill”, which includes tens of billions of dollars for mass deportations, detention facilities and construction of the border wall. House Republicans, who zealously investigated – and ultimately impeached – Noem’s predecessor, Alejandro Mayorkas, have so far shown little appetite for serious oversight inquiries of Trump’s cabinet officials.But outside of Washington, public concern is rising. A recent survey found nearly half of Americans believe the administration’s deportation polices have “gone too far”. If Republicans lose the House in next year’s midterms, Noem’s leadership of DHS would likely face much tougher congressional scrutiny.One Democrat, the representative Delia Ramirez, has already called for Noem’s resignation. “The theatrics of terror and erosion of our constitutional rights are daily DHS violations under Secretary Noem,” Ramirez, who sits on the House homeland security committee, said.Yet the secretary, now firmly re-established at the center of Trump’s orbit, appears undeterred. Her embrace of the spotlight – and unflinching execution of Trump’s vision – has some wondering whether she’s looking even farther ahead, perhaps to 2028, where the battle to become Trump’s heir is already taking shape.“Past secretaries of DHS have wanted to be, not seen, but heard,” Rosenzweig said. “I’ll put it another way: Noem is the first DHS secretary who’s running for president.” More

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    Ice agents use pepper spray and smoke grenades to disperse LA protesters

    The Department of Homeland Security conducted raids on multiple locations across Los Angeles on Friday, clashing with the crowds of people who gathered to protest.Masked agents were recorded pulling several people out of two LA-area Home Depot stores and the clothing manufacturer Ambient Apparel’s headquarters in LA’s Fashion District. Immigration advocates said the raids also included four other locations, including a doughnut shop.There has not yet been confirmation of how many people were taken into custody during the coordinated sweeps.At an afternoon press conference, Angelica Salas, executive director for the Coalition of Humane Immigrant Rights, said at least 45 people were arrested without warrants.“Our community is under attack and is being terrorized. These are workers, these are fathers, these are mothers, and this has to stop. Immigration enforcement that is terrorizing our families throughout this country and picking up our people that we love must stop now,” Salas told the crowd.The protest only grew as the afternoon wore on. By 6pm local time, hundreds of people assembled around the federal building in downtown Los Angeles, where those taken into custody during the raids are being held.Earlier in the day, armed agents clad in heavy protective and tactical gear, including some who wore gas masks, could be seen on video and through aerial footage pushing individuals and trying to corral large groups that congregated to challenge the raids.Smoke grenades were reportedly thrown near the crowds and pepper spray was used as the federal officers attempted to clear the area. As the demonstrations continued into the evening, videos showed officers firing less-lethal weapons toward protestors.View image in fullscreenSome people in the crowd attempted to block large armored trucks carrying FBI agents as they departed. One person reportedly threw eggs at the vehicles.The Los Angeles fire department was called to the scene to administer aid to protesters injured by agents and officers, which included the president of the California branch of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), David Huerta, the organization said in statement calling for his immediate release.“We call for an end to the cruel, destructive, and indiscriminate Ice raids that are tearing apart our communities, disrupting our economy, and hurting all working people,” Tia Orr, executive director of SEIU California said.“Immigrant workers are essential to our society: feeding our nation, caring for our elders, cleaning our workplaces, and building our homes.”The Los Angeles police department also assisted the federal officers in dispersing demonstrators, despite the department’s insistence that it is not involved in “civil immigration enforcement”, and would only have a presence to ensure public safety.Advocates used megaphones from the streets outside where the raids were occurring to remind workers inside of their rights, the Los Angeles Times reported. Some called out individual names and demanded they be given access to lawyers.“The community is here with you,” one person shouted. “Your family is here with you.”Los Angeles leaders were quick to condemn the actions, which were part of a string of high-profile raids undertaken by Immigration and Customs Enforcement under orders from Donald Trump.“I am closely monitoring the Ice raids that are currently happening across Los Angeles, including at a Korean-American owned store in my district,” Congresswoman Sydney Kamlager-Dove said in a post on X, along with instructions on how impacted constituents could reach her office for help.“LA has long been a safe haven for immigrants,” she added. “Trump claims he’s targeting criminals, but he’s really just tearing families apart and destabilizing entire communities.”Mayor Karen Bass said in a statement that she was “deeply angered by what has taken place,” and that her office was coordinating with immigrant rights community organizations.“These tactics sow terror in our communities and disrupt basic principles of safety in our city,” she said. “We will not stand for this.”Los Angeles councilmember Eunisses Hernandez said in a statement: “These actions are escalating: agents arrive without warning and leave quickly, aware that our communities mobilize fast. I urge Angelenos to stay alert.” More

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    The Guardian view on the Trump-Musk feud: we can’t rely on outsized egos to end oligopoly | Editorial

    It would have taken a heart of stone to watch the death of the Trump-Musk bromance without laughing. Democrats passed the popcorn on Thursday night as the alliance between the world’s most powerful man and the world’s richest imploded via posts on their respective social media platforms.Less than a week ago they attempted a conscious uncoupling in the Oval Office. Then Elon Musk’s attacks on Donald Trump’s “big, beautiful” tax and spending plan escalated to full-scale denunciation of a “disgusting abomination” – objecting to its effect on the deficit, not the fact it snatches essential support from the poor and hands $1.1tn in tax cuts to the rich.The president said that Mr Musk had “gone crazy” and was angry that electric vehicle subsidies were being removed, claimed he had fired him, threatened to terminate his government contracts, and mocked the billionaire’s recent black eye. Steve Bannon chipped in, suggesting that Mr Musk should be deported.Mr Musk said Mr Trump should be impeached and alleged the government had not released files on the late paedophile financier Jeffrey Epstein because the president was in them. He threatened to immediately start decommissioning the Dragon spacecraft – now key to Nasa’s programme – and suggested it was time for a new political party. The ultimate insult: “Without me, Trump would have lost the election,” he wrote.Mr Musk later appeared minded to limit the damage, backing away from the spacecraft threat – not surprising, perhaps, when he had just watched $152bn wiped off Tesla’s value. Each man knows that the other could hurt him, via government fiat or political war chest. Yet both are so unpredictable that the row could still reignite.Two narcissists used to imposing their will were never likely to coexist happily for long, despite the advantages of doing so: this was less a marriage of convenience than of naked self-interest. Mr Trump loathes sharing the limelight; the Tesla boss frequently grabbed it. The president is surely as resentful of as he is dazzled by Mr Musk’s spectacular wealth. He was angered to discover that Mr Musk had arranged private briefings on the Pentagon’s plans for any potential war with China – not only a blatant conflict of interest, but perhaps more upsettingly, a sign of his growing power. Mr Musk’s behaviour has also appeared increasingly erratic. A recent New York Times report alleged he took large amounts of drugs including ketamine while advising Mr Trump prior to the election. Mr Musk has described the story as “bs”.His departure from the president’s orbit is good news. Mr Musk implausibly claimed he would save $2tn annually – approaching a third of the federal budget – by taking a chainsaw to bureaucracy. Wild decisions by the so-called department of government efficiency are mired in the courts. But he has nonetheless caused real damage which will not easily be remedied, gutting agencies and departments which took decades to build. People are dying because of his demolition of USAID.Yet while the bond between the peak of power and the peak of wealth has been severed, politics remains in thrall to money. Mr Trump’s approach is particularly noxious, turning wealth directly into political favours and power, and power into further wealth. This is the new oligopoly. He oversees a cabinet of billionaires, and has directed his real estate tycoon friend Steve Witkoff, a man with no diplomatic experience, to bring peace in the Middle East and Ukraine. But though megadonors are heavily skewed towards the Republicans, Democrats too depend on billionaires. Mr Musk is a symptom of the underlying malaise. Democracy requires better safeguards against the unhealthy marriage of wealth and power than the rampant egos of those who command them. More

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    Musk and Trump are enemies made for each other – united in their ability to trash their own brands | Jonathan Freedland

    The scriptwriters of Trump: the Soap Opera are slipping. The latest plot development – the epic falling-out between the title character and his best buddy, Elon Musk – was so predictable, and indeed predicted, that it counts as the opposite of a twist. Still, surprise can be overrated. Watching the two men – one the richest in the world, the other the most powerful – turn on each other in a series of ever-more venomous posts on their respective social media platforms has been entertainment of the highest order. X v Truth: it could be a Marvel blockbuster.But this is more than mere popcorn fodder. Even if they eventually patch things up, the rift between the president and Musk has exposed a divide inside the contemporary right, in the US and beyond – and a fatal flaw of the Trump project.Naturally, much of it is personal. That’s why so many declared from the start that this was a star-cross’d bromance, whose destiny was only ever heartbreak. Even as Musk was declaring, back in February, that “I love @realDonaldTrump as much as a straight man can love another man,” wiser heads knew it was doomed. The egos were too large, the narcissism too strong, for their love to survive. In the Trump universe, as in the Musk galaxy, there is room for only one sun.In their case, the personal combines with business. On this reading, Musk’s disenchantment began in his pocket, his opposition to Trump’s “big, beautiful bill”, or “BBB”, currently before Congress, fuelled chiefly by the legislation’s axing of a $7,500 tax credit on the purchase of electric vehicles. With Tesla sales plunging, Musk needed that incentive to lure potential Tesla customers and was furious with Trump for scrapping it. That’s certainly the story Trump is telling. “I took away his EV Mandate that forced everyone to buy Electric Cars that nobody else wanted … and he just went CRAZY!” Trump posted.The suggestion that Musk’s driving motive was profit seems to have particularly antagonised the billionaire, prompting him to call for his former paramour to be impeached and to claim that Trump is named in the Jeffrey Epstein files, in effect implicating the president in a paedophile ring. Musk wants to present his objection not as self-serving but as ideological, casting himself as the fiscal conservative appalled by Trump’s “disgusting abomination” of a bill because it will increase the already gargantuan US deficit by trillions of dollars.Who’s right? It seems a stretch to argue that Trump’s hostility to electric cars was the problem: as Trump himself pointed out, Musk knew about that when he jumped on the Maga train last year. As for ballooning the deficit, you can see why that would irritate Musk. Adding trillions in red ink makes a mockery of the “cost-cutting” drive he headed up with his so-called department of government efficiency.The billionaire was already smarting from the failure of Doge to cut anything like the $2tn in spending he promised would be easy. All he succeeded in doing by, for instance, feeding the US agency for international development, or USAID, into “the wood chipper” was to take the lives of 300,000 people, most of them children, who had depended on that agency and its grants, according to a Boston University study. Even if you are minded, charitably, to accept Musk’s own estimate, he only shrank the federal budget by about $150bn. To watch as that effort was cancelled out by a $600bn tax cut to people earning more than $1m a year would be a humiliation indeed.Whatever its true cause, the Trump-Musk spat has illuminated a fault line in the right – and not only in the US. Battered and quieted by the Trump phenomenon, there still remain a few old-school conservatives with a vestigial presence in the Senate, for whom fiscal rectitude remains an article of faith. While Democrats oppose the “BBB” because its cuts to Medicaid will deprive more than 10 million Americans of basic health cover, these traditional Republicans are queasy about the Liz Truss-style risks of a massive unfunded tax giveaway. Overnight, Musk has become their champion.Ranged against them are the forces of nationalist conservatism, embodied by former Trump strategist and ex-convict Steve Bannon. They don’t have a libertarian yearning for a minimal state; on the contrary, they quite like muscular displays of state power. Witness Trump’s insistence on a Pyongyang-style military parade to celebrate his birthday, and note Bannon’s response to Musk’s impudence in challenging the ruler – he called for Musk’s businesses, Starlink and SpaceX, to be nationalised. Indeed, nationalist conservatism might not be quite the right term for what Bannon offers: nationalist socialism might be more apt, though something close to that has already been taken.There have been other manifestations of this divide. Musk opposed Trump’s tariffs; Bannon is for them. Musk wanted to see the US remain open to high-skilled, tech-savvy immigrants; Bannon wants to shut the door on them. These, then, are the two camps. (You can see similar faultlines on the British right, dividing Thatcherite Conservatives from Reform UK.) For a while, the anti-woke loathing of DEI policies was strong enough to keep the opposing blocs – free traders and protectionists; deficit hawks and big spenders – together. But that glue, as Trump said of Musk, is “wearing thin”.That has some serious implications for US politics and Trump’s presidency. It is conceivable that Trump won’t have the numbers to pass this bill, his central legislative goal, in its current form: the Republican majority in the House is wafer-thin, and one more defecting Republican could sink the proposal in the Senate. Musk has given would-be dissenters cover. The gazillionaire had promised to spend big to help Republicans in the November 2026 midterm elections. Much can happen between now and then, but Trump may now need to look elsewhere for a patron. Who knows, Musk might even follow through on his threat to fund the president’s Democratic opponents. Even if he does not go that far, he controls a prime platform of the right: X could soon become hostile territory for Trump. The point is, Musk is not your usual Trump antagonist. He has as loud a megaphone, and more money, than the president.It all adds up to a sad tale of two men who once had so much in common – perhaps one thing above all. Each has been lucky enough to find themselves in charge of a brand that once enjoyed global admiration and clout – and each man has systematically set about trashing that brand in the eyes of the world. Musk has done it more than once. He bought what had become an admittedly imperfect meeting place of some of the planet’s most influential people, Twitter, and turned it into a sewer of bigotry and lies, X. He built a company, Tesla, whose most obvious customers were high earners concerned about the planet and repelled them by association with a nationalist authoritarian who wants to “drill, baby, drill”.Trump, meanwhile, has taken the US, once a magnet for talent from across the globe, and done his best to dismantle all that made it attractive: its stability, its protection of free speech, the independence of its institutions, the quality of its science and universities. This week’s moves – the travel ban, the suspicion of overseas students, the war on Harvard – to say nothing of the ongoing hostility to democratic allies and coddling of foreign dictators, are just the latest instances of Trump doing to the US brand what Musk has done to Twitter and Tesla. No wonder Trump and Musk have broken up: they were always far too alike.

    Jonathan Freedland is a Guardian columnist

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    Trump’s new travel ban is a gratuitously cruel sequel | Moustafa Bayoumi

    I’m not much for horror movies, but I have just read that the film Black Phone 2 “will creep into cinemas” in October and that, compared to the original, it’s supposed to be a “more violent, scarier, more graphic” film. I’ll pass on the movie, but that description seems pretty apt to what living under this Trump administration feels like: a gratuitously more violent sequel to a ghoulish original.Consider the Muslim ban. Back in late 2015, candidate Donald Trump called for “a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country’s representatives can figure out what is going on”. He signed the first version of the Muslim ban on 27 January 2017, and protests erupted at airports across the nation at the revival of a national policy, similar to the Chinese Exclusion Act, that bars entry of whole swaths of people based on our national prejudices. It took the Trump administration three attempts at crafting this policy before the supreme court tragically greenlit it.While Joe Biden later reversed the policy, congressional moves to restrict the president’s ability to institute these blanket bans – such as the No Ban Act – have not succeeded. And on the first day of his second term, Trump indicated he was prepared to institute a wider-reaching travel ban. He has now done just that. The new executive order will “fully restrict and limit the entry [to the US] of nationals of the following 12 countries: Afghanistan, Burma, Chad, Republic of the Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Haiti, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and Yemen” and will also “partially restrict and limit the entry of nationals of the following 7 countries: Burundi, Cuba, Laos, Sierra Leone, Togo, Turkmenistan, and Venezuela”.Yes, there are key cutouts in the latest travel ban that make it a different animal from the original 2017 ban, but it still derives from the same family. Green-card holders, those with valid visas issued before the executive order was proclaimed, and professional athletes representing their countries in the forthcoming World Cup, for example, are exempt, illustrating how the administration has learned to write more litigation-resistant immigration exclusion orders.But make no mistake. Such a policy is alienating, counterproductive and simply racist. For one thing, Trump claims that the ban is necessary because the selected countries exhibit either “a significant terrorist presence”, a lack of cooperation in accepting back their nationals, or high rates of visa overstays. According to the Entry/Exit Overstay Report for fiscal year 2023 (the last one available), the number of people from Equatorial Guinea, a small African country, who overstayed their B1/B2 visas (travel to the US for business or pleasure) was 200. From the United Kingdom, it was 15,712.It’s true that the percentage (as opposed to the number) of people overstaying their visas from Equatorial Guinea is significantly higher than UK overstays. But Djibouti, which hosts the primary US military base in for operations in Africa, has an even higher percentage of B1/B2 visa overstayers than Equatorial Guinea – yet it isn’t part of the ban, illustrating how much it is based on narrow political calculations and cheap theatrics.The capriciousness of the policy was immediately evident after Trump released a video explaining his decision. “The recent terror attack in Boulder, Colorado, has underscored the extreme dangers posed for our country by the entry of foreign nationals who are not properly vetted, as well as those who come here as temporary visitors and overstayed their visas,” he said, adding: “We don’t want them.” Yet, as everyone knows, the suspect in the Boulder, Colorado, attack is an Egyptian national, another key US ally. And Egypt is not on the list.Nor should it be, because these lists of banned countries collapse individuals into vague categories of suspicion and malfeasance. Why should the actions of one person from any given country mark a completely different person as inadmissible? Trump may sound tough to his supporters when announcing the ban, but such broad-brush applications against basically all the nationals of comparatively powerless countries is hardly the flex that Trump thinks it is. In the eyes of the rest of the world, the new policy mostly makes the administration look like a bully, picking on a handful of Muslim-majority countries, a few African and Asian states, a couple of its traditional enemies, and Haiti.Meanwhile, the rest of the world also sees how the Trump administration has withdrawn temporary protections from more than 500,000 people from Cuba, Haiti, Venezuela and Nicaragua, suspended refugee resettlement from around the world, and yet welcomed in dozens of white Afrikaners from South Africa to the United States as refugees. The ethnocentrism of the policy is as naked as it is opportunistic.The truth is that the damage from Trump’s first-term Muslim ban was long-lasting and had all kinds of collateral impact, including on the mental health of family members living in the United States. And immigrant advocacy organizations are already sharply criticizing this latest version. AfghanEvac, a non-profit organization that facilitates the resettlement of Afghans who worked with American troops, stated that the new ban “is not about national security – it is about political theater”. To include Afghanistan among the banned countries, even as thousands of Afghans worked alongside American forces, is to Shawn VanDiver, the group’s founder and president, “a moral disgrace. It spits in the face of our allies, our veterans, and every value we claim to uphold.”Trump’s latest travel ban, his ramped-up immigration deportation regime, his international student crackdown, and his all but ending asylum in the United States add up to a clearly a concerted attempt to stave off the inevitable while vilifying the marginal. Demographers have been telling us for years now that the US will be a “majority minority” country around 2045, a prospect that has long frightened many of the white conservatives who make up Trump’s base. In response, Trump is pursuing a policy that draws on the most basic kind of nativism around, and one we’ve seen before in the United States.The 1924 Immigration Act severely restricted immigration to the US to keep America as white and as western European as possible. Only in 1965 were the laws finally changed, with the national immigration quotas lifted, laying the foundation for the multicultural society we have today. That earlier movie of epic exclusion lasted some 41 years. So far, this sequel is violent, scary and authoritarian. It had better be a short film.

    Moustafa Bayoumi is a Guardian US columnist More